Mark Corder, the new JET Management & Leadership course facilitator, shares how to build confidence.
In an ideal world, leaders are the people who are the confident one, at least on the outside. What do I mean by “on the outside”? Well, the only way people can tell if someone is confident or not is by their observable behaviours. A person may be viewed as being confident if their physical actions, posture and communication all point towards a certain level of confidence. This is how things appear to the outsider. Of course, they may be feeling different on the inside, but it is only their observable behaviour that matters; if they appear to be confident then that is what people will think of them. The opposite is exactly true.
It therefore makes sense that if you want to appear to be more confident, you need to identify the observable behaviours of people who appear to be confident and learn to adopt those behaviours into your own behaviour and style. It’s often irrelevant what people are thinking on the inside, it’s how they appear on the outside, and since behaviours can be learned, the first step to growing your own levels of confidence is to appear to be more confident.
The more confident you appear to be on the outside, the more you will begin to feel confident on the inside, as the people’s reactions to your behaviours will be reinforcing and therefore self-fulfilling. For all you know, there are many people whom you think are confident but in actual fact, they feel less confident than they act. If they can carry it off, so can you.
In addition to learning the attributes and behaviours of those whom appear to be confident, there are some other actions for you to consider. Note that only action will change anything, whether it be a behaviour or a mindset. Unless you actually act i.e. do something about it, you will always be what you have always been, so you need to act to make a change.
What else can you do? If you are the sort of person who prefers to sit near the back in meetings, presentations and conferences, commit yourself to sitting in the front row. That’s what confident people do. If you are the sort of person who prefers to say the least in meetings for fear of looking stupid, commit to speaking up and giving your views, which are likely to be shared by others in the room even if you don’t initially think so. If you are the sort of person who attends a meeting, event or networking session and waits for people to come to you, go and speak to someone else first. The more you do these things, the more you will realise that it is not as difficult or painful as you think. In addition, you will find that the continued practice of adopting these changes to your behaviour will make things feel easier each time you do them – much like lifting weights in the gym.
If you want to build your confidence, you need to commit to taking action, otherwise nothing will change.
